“You don’t have to sleep on the floor.” I forced myself to say it out loud.
“I’ve slept on worse.”
“I…” I drew in a breath, steadying myself. “I think I’d feel better if you were over here with me.”
The pause stretched. My heart thudded loud in my ears.
“Okay.”
He climbed into the bed beside me, careful and deliberate, then reached out to turn off the light. Darkness settled.
For a long moment, we lay there, both of us staring at the ceiling we couldn’t see, the silence filled with things neither of us was ready to say.
“About earlier,” he said.
I needed absolute clarity about which part of earlier he meant. I knew which one I was thinking about. “The kiss?”
“Yeah.”
I braced myself for the gentle letdown, the insistence that it was just a heat of the moment thing, a mistake.
“Look, I’m not trying to push you into anything. That would be a dick move. But I’m into you. I’m going to protect you through this, no matter what, even if you don’t feel the same.”
The inner teenage girl I pretended not to have squealed outright. He likes me! He really likes me!
“I… I’m into you, too.” Admitting it was more terrifying than the fire. Because this wasn’t about survival—this was about choice.
He shifted, and suddenly I was tucked against him, his body curved protectively around mine. “Good. That makes things easier.”
I relaxed into him by degrees, inch by inch. “You call this easy?”
“Oh, sweetheart, nothing about you is easy. Easy is boring. But not having to fight myself simplifies my life.”
“Oh.” Because what else could I say to that?
I felt his smile when he kissed my temple, soft and sweet. “Go to sleep, Counselor.”
And somehow—impossibly—I did.
Twenty-Nine
RIOS
I woke up with the taste of smoke in the back of my throat.
My eyes opened on a ceiling I didn’t recognize. Pale, smooth, with a faint hairline crack running toward the corner. Guest room. Caroline and Hoyt’s. I lay still long enough to take inventory—burns pulling on my arm under the fresh gauze, grit in my hair I hadn’t managed to rinse out completely, a dull ache behind my ribs from too much adrenaline and too little sleep.
And Madden.
She curled into my side with the kind of trust that hit me harder than the fire had. One arm tucked between us, her hand rested on my stomach, fingers slightly curled, as if only in sleep could she let herself even think of holding on. Her hair was loose, spilled across my chest and the pillow, and without the armor she wore when she was awake, she looked… younger. Softer around the mouth. Her lashes were dark against her cheeks, her brow smooth for the first time since she’d stepped back onto this island and started digging.
I watched her breathe.
Slow. Even. No rasp. No panic.
My chest loosened a fraction, like some part of me had been holding a fist tight all night and was only now learning how to unclench.
Her pajamas had slipped off one shoulder, showing the curve of skin there, pale in the early light. I didn’t touch it. Didn’t move. I didn’t trust myself to move without wanting more than I had any right to want.
